Global events have reignited scholarly interest in the relationship between polarisation and democratic quality. Populist victories in Europe, Donald Trump's electoral success in America, and the sustained popularity of figures like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India, have all depended upon the mobilisation of social and political division. In these parts of the world, the intensification of political conflict along ideological and identity-based lines has occurred in tandem with a decline in democratic quality.

More and more, analysts see polarisation as a critical factor in processes of democratic regression. Carothers and O’Donohue (2019: 2), for example, compare a range of countries from Latin America, Asia and Europe, and find that polarisation undermines democracy because it ‘routinely weakens respect for democratic norms, corrodes basic legislative process … exacerbates intolerance and discrimination, diminishes societal trust, and increases violence throughout the society’. Intense partisanship and polarisation create the conditions under which elite and mass support for liberal aspects of democracy—protection of freedoms and liberties for everyone—becomes increasingly ‘contingent’ or ‘conditional’.

Until recently, analysts viewed Indonesia as immune to such severe political polarisation and its pernicious effects. A divide between Islamic and pluralist parties has long structured Indonesia's party system: Islamic parties and their supporters promote a larger role for Islamic precepts in public life and politics, while pluralist parties have a more secular orientation. But patronage-driven politics has largely papered over ideological divisions in the democratic era. Indeed, when surveyed, a vast majority of politicians said they and the party to which they belong are willing to form coalitions with any of the other political parties (Aspinall et al. 2020). High levels of ethnic and religious fragmentation have also worked against the development of a divisive identity-based politics of the sort found in Malaysia—at least at the national level. In particular, complex doctrinal divisions and conflicts among proponents of political Islam made it difficult to categorise organisations or voters neatly into either a pluralist or Islamic camp.

The absence of polarisation for much of the democratic period can also be attributed in part to President Yudhoyono's (2004–2014) style of leadership.